


Mercenary Justice

by MYuzuki



Series: We Don’t Become Heroes Overnight (A Nerevar drabble series) [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Nerevar drabble series, Nerevar the mercenary, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, a murder mystery but not really, era-typical hostility between Chimer and Nords, pre-Hortator Nerevar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-12 17:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18451397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: Nerevar is a simple mercenary, better at fighting bandits than solving mysteries. But when a shopkeeper is murdered, he feels obligated to find her killer and get justice for her death.





	Mercenary Justice

**Author's Note:**

> So! I've been struggling with some writer's block when it comes to the other stories I've been working on, but I still have the insatiable need to write. Combine that with the fact that I've been playing Skyrim again lately (and started playing Morrowind for the first time) and I suppose some Elder Scrolls drabbles were inevitable. XD

" **Every good thing you do creates ripples that you may not see."**

* * *

It all started with a murder.

For Nerevar, who has spent the last few years doing mercenary work (which mostly involves guarding travelers and scaring off bandits), it's bit of an escalation from the norm and also something not precisely within his realm of expertise.

He's good at fighting people, protecting people, and charming clients into paying him extra for those services; subsequently, he's no stranger to dead bodies but he's also not the sort of person who searches for clues and solves the bloody mysteries of how those bodies came to be.

And yet here he is, trying to find a killer and get justice for a dead woman.

Part of it was that Mirilea had been (prior to her untimely demise) a former client of his; she'd once hired him to track down a thief that had stolen some valuables from her shop and somehow they'd kept in touch after that, not quite often enough to really be friends but still often enough for him to think of her with fondness. It's enough of a connection, at any rate, for him to want justice for her.

The other part of it was that she, a Chimer widow who'd been single-handedly raising two children, had supposedly been killed by a Nord who'd been spotted in the area. What a Nord was doing in this part of the land, so far from where the other barbarians typically made landfall for their various invasion attempts, he did not know. But it made his blood boil nevertheless.

It was bad enough that the savage Nords tried to conquer the Chimer on a semi-regular basis, but for them to stoop to killing and mutilating innocent civilians? It was abhorrent and utterly unacceptable.

After all, to kill another warrior on the field of battle was one thing; to slaughter an unarmed shopkeeper and orphan her two children was another thing entirely.

So Nerevar is trying to solve Mirilea's murder. With nothing to go on but hearsay and what little evidence of relevance could be found upon her corpse, he's finding it a bit more difficult than he'd anticipated. After all, her killer was probably the Nord, but he can't just make assumptions because there's a slim chance that it's someone else.

It doesn't help that no one else in this tiny little village is overly interested in resolving the matter, either. Oh, they're terribly sorry that Mirilea was killed, of course, and they're suitably alarmed that a Nord barbarian might be on the loose in the area, but beyond that they've returned to their lives with barely a backwards glance.

And while Nerevar doesn't approve of such a callous disregard of a woman's life cut short (for all that he's a mercenary and therefore barely a step away from bring a paid killer himself, he's always had a strong appreciation for life and all its intricacies), he can understand where they're coming from.

The land they live in can be harsh and hard to survive in sometimes, and every Chimer must put their own survival first, especially in dangerous times like these. Furthermore, this town has little beyond farmers, merchants, and cooks, and very few farmers, merchants, and cooks have the time or resources to waste on avenging an acquaintance's death.

But Nerevar is not a farmer or a merchant or a cook, and he has the time and resources needed to pursue vengeance, as well as an inclination to do so despite the fact that he will have to pass up actual paying jobs in the meantime.

So let the little village return to its routine; Nerevar is accustomed to working alone anyway, and he has enough motivation to see this through to the end on his own.

(There are a few false starts in his amateur investigation, but he finds the Nord three days later, hiding out in a cave not far from the village. The man rants and raves about elves and honor, and brandishes a knife that is still stained dark with Mirilea's dried blood.

Nerevar slays him with little effort, and while the Nord's death certainly doesn't fix what was destroyed in the first place, he hopes that Mirilea's spirit can perhaps find a bit more peace now than before.)


End file.
